Al Hirschfeld

American caricaturist, born 21 June 1903 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, died 20 January 2003 in New York City, New York, USA. He was married to Dolly Haas from 1943 until her death in 1994. Their daughter Nina was born in 1945.

Hirschfeld is known for hiding his daughter Nina's name in most of the drawings he produced after her birth in 1945. The name would appear in a sleeve, in a hairdo, or somewhere in the background. As Margo Feiden described it, Hirschfeld engaged in the “harmless insanity,” as he called it, of hiding her name [Nina] at least once in each of his drawings. The number of NINAs concealed is shown by an Arabic numeral to the right of his signature. Generally, if no number is to be found, either NINA appears once or the drawing was executed before she was born.